


Your soul laid bare, for all to see

by Stargirltakingflight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Domestic Fluff, Flower Magic, Growing Up Together, Hogwarts, M/M, Orphan Harry Potter, Snapshots, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27696091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stargirltakingflight/pseuds/Stargirltakingflight
Summary: The magic of the Flowers was a mysterious thing. Everyone knew that they appeared at seemingly random times, growing with love and decaying with grief, or pain. Rarely, people had different Flowers growing on their skin at the same time. The magic usually knew whose heart someone favored.That was the other thing about it - there was no need to memorise flower language or ponder the identity of your intended. You just knew, intimately, deeply, once you saw them bloom.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald (mentioned), Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 3
Kudos: 191





	Your soul laid bare, for all to see

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In Bloom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26996050) by [Celia_and](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and). 



> Hello and welcome to my first soulmate AU!
> 
> I was heavily inspired by Celia_and’s breathtaking work and how tenderly it described the heartbreak and yearning of hiding such a prominent display of love. 
> 
> This doesn’t quite focus on that conflict, but I hope it still finds you well, wherever you may be.

When Harry first met Tom, he didn't know yet that this boy, this tall, dark, petulant child would mean the world to him, one day. 

But now he does. 

It is a wonderful, heady feeling and he chases it like the Hellebore across the other's ribcage in the sunlight, fingers trailing over leaves and buds and flowers, still growing daily, even after all these years. 

* * *

When they first met, they were just children, alone and adrift in a world uncaring, bleak. Two orphans destined for nothing much. At least, that's what Harry had assumed at the time, barely seven and wary of anything and anyone promising kindness with a bloodied hand. 

They circled each other, at first. Children playing at being predator and prey, they watched and noticed and catalogued, for even then they understood that something about the other was calling them closer.

Sometimes, Harry thinks, sitting in the morning sun, it is almost like his world is split in two. There's his past, monochrome and ghastly, a sharp-tongued thing much rather forgotten than faced. There's the darkness of his young childhood and then - as though someone had shuffled the playing cards, the rest of it is visible, vibrant purples, dark greens, blue as dark as night but sweeter, hushed notes of burgundy, and at the center, always, endless - Tom. 

* * *

Their early school years passed in a whirlwind of discovery, excitement, magic and soon, realization. Knowledge of their specialness and yet, a wake up call that for all that they were special in this mundane part of the world, they did not matter at all in the grand scheme of Purebloods and magic and wars. Again.

Tom was all drive and ambition, calculating and executing shaky political plays in their snakeskin home, even in first year, when they had no bargaining chips and nothing to bluff with. Harry, then, was passion and fire, content to stay back until something caught his fancy, but then, oh, then he acted with a determination that made Tom watch in awed wonder more than once. There were none more protected than those loved by Harry Potter, chief among them Tom himself. Not that they knew it yet, nor Harry. 

No; at that point in time they were merely children, playing politics as they once did prey.

* * *

Tom had always known that he and Harry belonged together. Granted, he hadn't realised it at first, those early days at the orphanage, being watched by the boy with bright green eyes, a stare so emotionless it gave even coldblooded Tom a fright. But those eyes had thawed, slowly, with every day they spent together, reluctantly forced together as roommates at first, then close and closer still as friends. 

And, surprising Tom and everyone else, the change in him didn't stop after thawing.

No, Harry grew warmer, burned brighter, shone stronger with every day that passed. No one had expected the unfeeling creature that had arrived at.their doorstep to turn into this exuberant, fiery boy, rarely seen without Tom by his side or at his back. 

Already they knew, back then, that theirs was not a kind world. They fought for each scrap of belonging and curbed each other's extremes, soothing frayed edges left by adults with sugar coated knives and neglect.

* * *

_ Neither of them had ever heard of the Flowers at that point, but any wixen who saw them would have known at once. Known, that where unblemished skin flickered then, Flowers would grow in time, overtaking emptiness cell by cell.  _

* * *

When they had been at Hogwarts a few years, shaky alliances cementing their place in the house of snakes, no throne, certainly, but no cage either, they and all their classmates experienced first hand the anguish that was a field of Flowers, rotting. 

One of the seventh years, marked with Dandelions all the way up her arms, Olive Hornby, jumped from the astronomy tower one night in April, sadness too strong to bear. She was found the next morning and for a while, the entire castle mourned. 

None, however, mourned with the sky high grief of her girlfriend. A sixth year, Myrtle Warren, small and unassuming, but for the Dandelions that danced upon her skin. They had grown on her body throughout her years at Hogwarts, crossing over life lines and one brave tendril crawling up her neck, peeking out from under her school robes. 

In another world, she would have been called ugly. In this one, though, she was beautiful. Everyone knew of her, knew even before, for her Flowers betrayed a heart that ran deep. 

Seeing her beautiful beautiful flower-clad skin turn black and grey and all colours dead as the Dandelions that had covered most of her body slowly died before fading to nothingness, it had shaken them all. There were rumors, though neither Tom nor Harry had asked to confirm, that after her skin was washed clean, one small Dandelion still remained, nestled in the middle of her ribcage, right next to her heart, blooming. 

The point was, Harry and Tom both knew, even when they didn't yet, that they belonged together. So when the first Flower started to bloom on Harry's shoulder, where he could just barely make it out, the faintest bud a colour of dark purple he couldn't pinpoint for all that he'd spent hours looking through the books, there was no fear. They'd both, silently, without ever speaking a word of it, as they were so often wont to do, communicating in raised eyebrows and flicks of the eyes, agreed that it would be them, forever. 

* * *

_ The magic of the Flowers was a mysterious thing. Everyone knew that they appeared at seemingly random times, growing with love and decaying with grief, or pain. Rarely, people had different Flowers growing on their skin at the same time, as the magic usually knew whose heart someone favored.  _

_ That was the other thing about it - there was no need to memorise flower language or ponder the identity of your intended. You just knew, intimately, deeply, once you saw them bloom. _

* * *

That day, he ran as fast as he could, robe barely hanging on in his search to find Tom, to tell him, to show him the final proof of what they had known all along. 

It was no surprise, then, that he should crash into an equally rushed Tom in one of the corridors just off the great hall. It seemed that even in this, they were equal, for just as Harry took off his robe with swirl, presenting the dark bud upon his shoulder, Tom, ecstatic, pushed up his sleeve, revealing a Flower on the cusp of opening, right there, proof of the love they'd felt for years, only now starting to turn from a tender, childish bird into a bigger, stronger beast. Love, they knew, had made much stronger people bleed already. 

Everyone knew the tale of Grindelwald and Dumbledore, two enemies, stuck on two sides of the same coin and bound by the Flowers on their skin. They were buried together in a field of foxgloves when their heartache killed them both, Flowers vibrant even weeks after their death. They had died at the same time, apparently, leaving no time for the rot to catch.

* * *

_ The Flowers had never enjoyed seeing fated partners separated; and they made their displeasure known in horrifying ways, for love was beautiful but cruel and painful and many a wixen had cursed the weight their kind had born for centuries, wishing to have been a muggle instead. For all the magic and wonder in their world, there was something frightening about knowing you were preordained in such clear paths. _

* * *

For Harry and Tom though, not much changed. They laughed, they cried, they kissed, they talked and grew all the same. A war brewed around them still, and made them wary. But they had never once stopped fighting since those years back at the orphanage and they were not those same young boys they'd been. When once they'd thought they were special, yet not, they now knew that it really didn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. They had friends, now. Allies, acquaintances too, that would stand by their side - they'd made sure of it.

Tom, all calculating stares, sharp eyes and furrowed brows, and Harry, burning eyes and flighty grin, togethera they wrapped their classmates round their fingers, flytraps offering illusions of honey, and when they left, graduation just another facet of the long life ahead, they were no longer two lonely, poor boys from a muggle orphanage. Oh, they weren't rich by any means, make no mistake. But they weren't alone, and they were not without hope, or plans, or ideas. 

Had never been, really, since discovering this beautiful, magical, cruel place and making their home in it, burrowing deep into the marrow of its bone, so entrenched that nothing could cut them free against their will.

* * *

Years later, after they'd stood on that cusp of adulthood, staring an uncertain future in the face, Harry woke each day to a small cottage near Hogsmeade, tracing sunbeams and shadows across the still sleeping form of his husband, pressing soft kisses to the Flower buds that still sprung up even now, proof that their love for one another knew no bounds. 

Tom's had taken over his right arm fully, his hand a field of wine dark Hellebore, crawling up his shoulder and descending over his front, his ribs down to his legs, crossing over his heart to slowly curl down the other arm, while Harry's had traveled round his neck first, stretching over his heart and torso while a lone tendril sneaked up behind his ear, only to curl down in tender delicate whisps above his right eye, a lightning bolt of Flowers, proclamation of love for all the world to see. 

He loved them, as he loved Tom, fully and without abandon, and he thanked the stars every night for gifting him with such luck. 

* * *

Atop the sun soaked pillows, the blanket rustles, startling Harry out of his reverie and reminiscing as he stares at his waking husband, eyes bright and fiery, a soft smile playing around his lips, born from sweet domesticity, from evenings in front of the fire, mornings spent in a hurry, before they both leave for work, and from the contentment to be found in certain love.

His hand trails up a lone petal on Tom's arm, and as he leans down to press a kiss to the other's lips, soft and gentle, the sun falls on his shirtless back, where a new Flower begins to bloom, the very moment their lips touch.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> The flower that I imagine blooming on their skin is a dark purple perennial Hellebore, which looks like [this](http://thimblefarms.com/jpg/perennial_m_helleborus_x_hybridus_blue_lady.jpg). 
> 
> If you want to talk all things Harry Potter or just ramble about headcanons, why not head on over to my tumblr @[stargirltakingflight](https://stargirltakingflight.tumblr.com/) and shoot me a message? I promise that I’d love to hear from you.
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated!


End file.
